My senior year has started ! This makes me think more about my life and what I have done so far as a human and an interactive designer. The up coming year I am planning to work hard and to make a useful project that can help in solving an existing issue . Not only benefit me but also benefits others, that's my goal for this year!
My definitions for knowledge, critical and research
Starting the first day of the class (On Wednesday), we went over the syllabus and the course objectives. We are going to learn about "Research through Design" which seems to be an important process for designers. I am excited to learn how to research and how to get benefit from my research. Then we went through three words to define as a group (knowledge, critical and research) . These words seemed to be easy to define at first but when we were thinking about the word in depth, it was not that easy.
“What should we expect from Research throughDesign?” and “Research through Design as a Method forInteraction Design Research in HCI” was assigned to read. The first reading was little bit confusing as it shows how there is no standardization for design and design is generative where as the second reading shows some of the methods of design. It was interesting reading two contradictory readings. On my side, I agree with Gaver that research through design is likely to produce theories that are "provisional, contingent, and aspirational" . At a point, the design maybe change later and inspires others. These two readings have broaden my thoughts about design and what design really mean!
On friday's class, we discussed the readings and the quiz we had to do . We got the chance to understand the reading more and what the authors really meant to say. Then we wrote three problems for brainstorming that we want to work on . My problems seemed to be broad but as this is my first week I will try to narrow it down. One problem I am thinking about is war. I want to create a VR, AR or installation that will shows the experience of war. I know thats hard to do but I really want to do it.
Our 7 important parts in an Annotated Portfolio
The second half of the class, we share our definitions for the three words (knowledge, critical and research) in our group. The commonalities we had was experience, boundaries, information and limits. It was interesting to have a similar definitions. Then we started brainstorming what's important in an Annotated Portfolio. We came up with 7 important parts in an Annotated Portfolio as shown in the right.
First week went so fast and I hope to learn and gain knowledge as much as I can!